Nine upstate academic, medical and high-tech institutions have agreed to collaborate on research to seek understanding and cures to a variety of diseases, the organizations' leaders announced Monday at Albany Medical Center.

The group has formed a consortium called New York Hub for Emerging Applications in Life Sciences, or NY HEALS. It would connect doctors and life sciences researchers with advanced data analysis through such resources as IBM's Watson supercomputer. Watson, which can answer questions in natural human language, is known for competing on the TV quiz show "Jeopardy" in 2011.

The group's goals include advances in personalized medicine, such as portable devices that administer medication; brain mapping; cancer treatments that consider a patient's genes and environment; and the acceleration of drug development for preventing infectious diseases.

NY HEALS' first endeavor will be to seek funding through the federal BRAIN Initiative announced by President Obama in April. The BRAIN program — it stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — is expected to provide $40 million in funding through the National Institutes of Health in fiscal year 2014, which begins Tuesday.

The upstate consortium's initial proposal will build on work already being done by Dr. Anthony Ritaccio at Albany Med and Gerwin Schalk at the state Health Department's Wadsworth Center laboratories to surgically implant electrodes on patients' brains to map brain activity, such as monitoring epileptic seizures. Their goal is to advance the development of permanent electrodes that would restore functions, such as language, to people who have suffered a brain injury or accident, such as a stroke.

To get there, Ritaccio said, the researchers will need help from experts in such fields as materials engineering, neurology and surgery.

NY HEALS has been launched with an official agreement among the institutions to collaborate and no financial investment, said Albany Medical Center President and CEO James J. Barba. A "modest capital investment" will eventually be needed to fund administrative staff dedicated to the consortium's work, he said.

Executives at the announcement hailed the consortium as an innovation that is breaking down institutional and regional barriers to collaborative discovery.